


I'm Here

by mggislife2789



Category: Aaron Hotchner - Fandom, Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 05:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9585080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their original stories. This is only for fun. It's where my brain goes after the credits roll. No copyright intended. Better safe than sorry ;)





	

It had been nearly three years since you were taken by Zach Jerrard. After two days of being strategically cut and waterboarded, the team had found you alive - barely, but alive. As was required by the Bureau, you went for six months of therapy after you returned to work. You completed it without a problem and were cleared by the Bureau’s therapist to continue working for the Bureau. It happened rarely, but if someone couldn’t recover from their ordeal, they were let go, but you made it through.

The first anniversary you’d gone through a little bit of an episode, but you were able to contain it to your apartment after work. It was a one or two day thing problem and then it went away. The second anniversary actually passed before you remembered it, which you figured was a good sign. Given that, you assumed that the third anniversary of your capture would slide by without you ever noticing. 

But you were wrong.

A whole two weeks before the third anniversary of your capture, you started waking up in a sweat in the middle of the night. No nightmares - just a cold sweat. Every. Single. Night. After about four days of that, you started seeing Jerrard’s face before you woke up. Every time you closed your eyes, you saw his face. You were scared to sleep, so for days on end, you napped through the night, grabbing 20 minutes here and there before waking up to your attacker’s face. Over the past three nights, you’d gotten maybe seven hours of sleep, and it was starting to show.

Makeup couldn’t do anything to cover the bags under your eyes. You were falling asleep at your desk. Thinking straight was a thing of the past. This was fucking with the way you worked, and that wasn’t okay. You just had no idea what to do about. Hopefully, after the anniversary passed, everything would go back to normal.

——–

The anniversary came and went without any reprieve from the night sweats and lack of sleep. If anything, after that day passed, they only got worse. Each night, you could remember the feel of the cuts he made on your body - how it felt to not be able to breathe underwater. It was like your lungs were on fire, threatening to burst from within you, and you felt every sensation before waking up screaming, his face still flashing before your eyes.

“Y/N,” Hotch called from his office, “Can you come in here for a moment?”

With a huff, you pushed away from your desk and walked toward his office. Hotch wasn’t just your boss, he was one of your closest friends, and you knew he was concerned for you, but you had no desire to talk about this with anyone right now. “I don’t know what’s going on in your life right now,” he said, his normally stern-looking face soft with concern, “but I can tell that something is wrong and if you need to talk about it, I’m here.”

Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was your pride. Maybe it was a combination of a bunch of things, but you snapped at him, telling him that your problems were your own and you’d deal with them by yourself, before storming back to your desk and attempting to complete your paperwork.

Each day that passed forced you to retreat further and further into yourself, until you only conversed with you friends and teammates when it was absolutely necessary for a case. This waking up every night thing couldn’t last forever right? You could still do your job, which was all that mattered to you. 

It had been nearly a month since the anniversary - about six weeks since you’d first started waking up in a cold sweat. Instead of calling you to his office, which would give you plenty of opportunity to turn around and walk out, Hotch started walking up to your desk to ask you how you were feeling. “Y/N you have to talk to someone about what’s bothering you or it’s never going to go away,” he’d say. Through sleep-deprived eyes, you’d look up and tell him that you didn’t need to do anything, what you needed was for him and everyone else to leave you alone.

About two days later, you went the entire day without speaking to anyone and returned home. Just as you were getting into something called sleep, you heard a knock at the door. When you looked through the peephole, you saw Hotch standing there. Your first instinct was to get pissed, but you opened the door anyway. “What do you want Hotch?” you asked.

“Something is wrong,” he said, taking a step into your apartment. “You need to talk to someone. Anyone.”

“I’m fine, Hotch,” you retorted, the tears beginning to swell.

As you turned around, he followed you into the apartment and closed the door behind him. “You’re not fine,” he insisted. “Everyone is worried about you.”

“I’ll be fine, Hotch,” you said, as a tear fell from your eye. “I just need time. I can’t…” When you closed your eyes to try and compose yourself, a sheet of tears fell, coating your cheeks in the salty liquid. 

“What is it?” he said, walking toward you and enveloping you in his arms. “What’s been happening?”

The dam broke as you sobbed into his chest. “Every night, I wake up in a cold sweat and see Jerrard’s face in front of my eyes. I can feel everything he did to me. My lungs are on fire. My skin is pricked over and over again with the tip of his knife…I thought this was over. After three years…why can’t I forget. All I want to do is forget.”

At first, Hotch just held you tightly, rubbing your back with the palm of his hand instead of trying to say anything. “You can’t keep this all to yourself. Just because you need help doesn’t make you any less strong,” he said, as he swayed back and forth with you in the middle of the kitchen. “You survived the impossible. There are bound to be some lasting effects.”

A heaving sob brought you to your knees, Hotch still holding you tightly. “I want to forget. I want to stop seeing his face. I want his name to be a bad memory. I just…want to sleep.”

Hotch started to get up from the floor and gathered you in his arms, taking you to the couch where he placed you in his lap. “Go to sleep,” he said as he smoothed your hair. “I’m here.”


End file.
